Life On Prison Earth

After my mother died, my maternal grandmother took me back to Detroit to live with her and her daughter, my maternal aunt. My aunt had five children and supported us all by cleaning rich white folks houses as well as receiving ADC/Welfare. [Later, after I left home, she eventually got a full-time job at Chrysler]. My aunt was almost always shouting mainly because her two oldest sons, [especially the second oldest] were always doing something they should not. Though she never shouted at me, I found the shouting to be disturbing; I never got used to it. I never understood it.

Nonetheless, living with her was far more wonderful than living with my mother’s husband. I lived in utter fear of him. My mother and siblings and I were terrified of the man who eventually murdered her after beating her and us for ten years. Living with my aunt was like a paradise by comparison and she treated me as if I were one of her own — her shouting, notwithstanding. I cannot overemphasize how so much better living with her and my grandmother was by comparison.

But, while living with my aunt, I ran away twice. After the second time, she asked my why. I told her I did not think she loved me. She said just because she does not go around saying “I love you” doesn’t mean she did not. She was correct. Yes, living with my mother, I was her confidante. I was special to my mother; we suffered together at her husband’s hand [he would often torment us both at the same time while leaving my siblings alone]. She expected me one day to save her. I knew my mother loved me. True, my mother never told me she loved me; she demonstrated it — ultimately, dying because she did. Yes, if she had not loved me, and her other children, she could have grown old instead of being murdered at age thirty.

Indeed, my aunt loved me, too — the best way she knew how. She did not have to take me in after my mother died. She could have treated me differently than she did her own – but she did not. I was never mistreated, never neglected, never ignored. My aunt’s love was real and genuine — different from my mother’s but just as heartfelt.

Years later I was able to understand and appreciate this fact. It took hindsight for me to have insight. Sometimes time has to pass before we can understand the past. Ruth loved me and unfortunately it took growing up to realize that. Hers was a different generation. Not a generation that hugged and said, “I love you”. It was a generation that showed rather than told.

It is true that actions speak louder than words but the sound of words can be like the spices in a feast of good food. It is better to love both ways: show and tell. But one of them should always be the least one does if one does not do both.